Rare Insight: An ICE Deportation Officer Describes Work Handcuffed by Washington
Watching dangerous illegal immigrants walk around free of deportation fear 'really sucks'
By Todd Bensman on March 9, 2021
Learning how immigration policy orders streaming out of the new management in Washington actually play out on the front lines is a tough proposition these days. Few in the field are exactly eager to talk about their jobs when they perceive that high-up bosses hate them. That is most especially true of those who work for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Enforcement and Removal Operations (ICE ERO) division, the Democratic Party's favorite whipping boy.
One of President Biden's first moves in office was to "pause" almost all ERO operations for 100 days. Then, when that was temporarily halted in Texas court action, the administration issued new rules sharply curtailing which illegally present aliens ICE agents can arrest: mainly the worst aggravated felons and terrorists (whose continued freedom would prove politically embarrassing), but even that requiring unprecedented individual pre-approvals from Washington headquarters. Next up, as my colleague Jessica Vaughan has expertly sussed out, is a proposal to abolish ICE's deportation officer corps altogether in a soon-to-be announced "reorganization" of the agency.
The extent to which these Washington ideas actually translate to the ground is rarely revealed and is made especially confusing when some media focus on residual removals that are still taking place, which are usually painted as examples of Biden still doing this to innocent people.
https://cis.org/Bensman/Rare-Insight-ICE-Deportation-Officer-Describes-Work-Handcuffed-Washington
